The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 4 - How I Discovered A More Grateful Perspective

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this episode I look back on a trip I took to India where I got to take a look at what life is like in the slums of Mumbai. This entire experience shifted my perspective completely and yet the most surprising thing about what I was seeing wasn’t the grim reality of poverty, but the unshakable fact that these people were happy. I walked away from those slums with an entirely new perspective on the privilege we have been given from birth, and this is where I introduce how I discovered a more grateful perspective Full episode - https://g2ul0.app.link/uPvHRJw80fb 

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. I went to India for 14 days. I got to see a lot. I went to the Taj Mahal. I did the touristy stuff. And I also went and saw how the people live. I went to the slum in Mumbai. I went up a mountain. I went through jungles. I saw it all. I witnessed things I never thought existed, I guess. I had my perspective changed forever. We've all seen pictures of slums, right? We've all seen the movies. But I promise you, you have no idea what a slum is like until you go there. I was sweating with the heat. I was

overwhelmed by the sound and my eyes saw mess, rubbish and raw sewage like i've never seen before the slum is i guess the most entrepreneurial place on earth the whole of india comes there dumps their rubbish there and the people that live in the slum basically recycle it to make a living and so i saw men children women recycling tvs to extract the copper from the wires so that they could sell the melted down copper to the world. I saw them doing the same with rubber, turning tires into rubber pellets to sell to the world. It's the most resourceful place on earth, but it's the most heartbreaking in the sense that these people are living in conditions you could never even imagine. I will never forget the moment I saw a three year old kid run up to me whilst playing on this pile of rubbish.

And he squatted down in front of me and he pooed and then he peed. And as he got up and began to run away from me, I saw him trip. And I looked over to see what he tripped on because it's, I mean, the whole place is a tip. And he tripped on the body of a dead rat. And this kid was completely naked. And I remember just thinking of taking pause for a second and thinking, where the hell are these kids' parents? And it was just incredible. The place was just incredible the place was just in incredible there were you know things in there

that i've i couldn't even articulate um people just sleeping all over the floors i walked past one room which was so hot i had to um i had to step away and take a breath and i asked what was in there and it was just a hole in the ground. And they said it was a bakery. That hole in the ground is a bakery. They said there's a man in there baking right now. I promise you the heat in that hole in the ground was hotter is why I wrote slum gratitude in my diary the people there never asked me for a thing they didn't ask me for a penny they didn't beg me they didn't ask for food or money or anything at all and more shockingly more shockingly than anything at all the people were really really happy and obviously that's just an observation right I don't know how happy they were didn't ask them but I when I look through my camera album specifically with the kids there wasn't one kid in any of my photos that wasn't happy that wasn't smiling didn't have a massive smile on

their face and as I walked through I saw people that was laughing and playing and playing games and they'd got a stick and they were playing cricket. And I walked away from the slums, weirdly not feeling sorry for anybody in there because they didn't feel sorry for themselves. upon my own society here in the UK and how often we complain about so little and really how complaining and being negative is a very I guess subjective thing we complain because it's relative to the world we live in and because I've been there and because I saw that little kid soil himself and then run and trip on a dead rat. My perspective of what is complain worthy has shifted forever. I've built a tremendous amount of gratitude for the things that I have, but I've also realized that it's really not about the things I have at all. It's actually all about my perspective on the things I have and my perspective on who I am, where I am.

And that's what I call slum gratitude. I walked away from the slums with a tremendous amount of gratitude and a new perspective on how to be happy within myself. If I had to guess, if I had to guess, I would guess that the people I saw in those slums are happier than the people I see in this country every single day. The people I see posting on Instagram and Facebook. And I think that says something. The next thing it really taught me was about the privilege we've been given from birth and how many of us us just by being born in a part of the world where we have a roof over our heads, we have a parent or parents, we have internet, we have all of these things, schooling, education, we have tremendous privilege and every time you make an

excuse you are disrespecting the privilege you were given when you were born and I really want to embrace that personally in my own life and see what I've been given as a lottery ticket to be and achieve anything I want to because those people in those slums aren't making excuses because nobody's there to listen and in my own life I'm just like everybody else I make excuses sometimes and it's very easy upon coming back to the UK to fall into the trap of the old behaviours and the lack of gratitude and the thinking, you know, at times that I'm disadvantaged. But I'm truly, truly blessed. And we all are.

If you're listening to my podcast right now, I promise you, you have more than the great majority of this world have. Don't disrespect your privilege.